Task 1: Equality and Language

How can people be citizens in any true sense if they cannot communicate in the official or state language? Conversely, how can members of a national or ethnic minority preserve their cultural identity if they lose their language?

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English is the dominant language of interaction in Britain today, partly as a result of hundreds of years of linguistic imperialism.






In Europe, there have traditionally been two broad approaches to language policy. In 1992, The Council of Europe adopted the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (ECRML) to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe. The Treaty recommends 68 concrete public measures to member states!

In order to achieve parity of status between the speakers of English and those of other national minority languages what special, concrete measures (if any) would you consider both necessary and desirable in Britain? Some examples are given below:

  1. to make available a substantial part of state-funded education in the relevant regional or minority languages?
  2. to guarantee a defendant in a criminal court the right to use his/her regional or minority language?
  3. the use by local / regional authorities of regional or minority languages in debates in their assemblies, without excluding, however, the use of the official language(s) of the State?
  4. to encourage and/or facilitate the creation of at least one radio station and one television channel in the regional or minority languages?

For more examples of other measures to protect minority languages go to Part III of the full text of the Treaty.

As defined by the Charter, 'regional or minority languages' are languages traditionally used within a given territory of a state, but what about immigrant languages? Two hundred years of migration to Britain has resulted in a rich diversity of languages, ethnicities, traditions and religions. If we recognise and value the language heritage of indigenous national minorities should we not also recognise and value the language heritage of citizens of other ethnic origins?

Questions to Consider

Which of the statements below do you most agree with and why?

Are the two statements mutually exclusive?

  1. Citizens of some ethnic minority groups should be publicly encouraged and enabled to preserve their own their language in similar ways to citizens of traditional national minority groups.
  2. Citizens of all ethnic minority groups have a duty to publicly communicate in the dominant language and by not doing so they threaten national unity and social cohesion.